Friday, May 15, 2009

Pres. Obama too tells us to stop

That's ok sir and madam, we'll figure our way out of this .. and you know, we'll be the better for it. I'm all for us suffering and managing on our own rather than giving into international terrorism (I was going to say pressure but this is terrorism) and giving up our freedom to them.

Isn't the US unwittingly encouraging its enemies like Al Qaeda to shift from destroying economic and military targets to hostage taking to have the US aggression stopped in Afghanistan?

No sooner had President Obama issued his statement than the LTTE welcomed it. But, true to form, it chose to remain silent on the US call for disarming and releasing civilians. Instead, it demanded an immediate UN intervention in Sri Lanka so that its leaders could escape death.

Now, what would President Obama do? The LTTE has not given a damn about his strident call! How would he deal with the outfit banned as a foreign terrorist organisation in the US? The US government has not spelt out action it intends to take against the LTTE for non compliance.

If the US could force the LTTE to disarm and let go of civilians in keeping with President Obama's wish, the humanitarian crisis will be over in no time.

How does the US propose to make the LTTE fall in line?

The Obama administration has already taken punitive action against the Sri Lankan government for defiance: It is blocking an IMF loan facility to this country for the 'crime' of not agreeing to a humanitarian truce with a terrorist group. That is the US is meting out collective punishment to a democratic sovereign state for battling terrorism, while allowing a ruthless terrorist outfit to go scot free in spite of its non compliance as well as barbaric crimes.

Is this how the US is promoting democracy in the world?

Please do read the entire editorial; its quite illuminating of how much damage has been done by the behavior of certain countries with regards how they ask us to give in to terror while they go off gallivanting into other countries killing thousands of innocent people. War crimes against Sri Lanka?? Anyone heard of George W. Bush?!

The civilians caught up in this mess are my fellow brethren Sri Lankans. Unfortunately, they've not been caught up in this only for the last few months when the world has paid attention (because LTTE has forced attention to save it from death), but rather for 30 years! We've tried to make peace with LTTE at least 3 times and each time it has resulted in Eelam War Next starting up. Finally we've been pushed to a situation where the only way to get past suicide bombs, bus bombs, airplane bombs, extortion and more is to totally destroy the LTTE. That's what my country is doing now.

Of course that's not coming at no cost. Hundreds (and maybe thousands) of civilians have probably lost their lives, many more thousands have got injured and nearly an entire generation has been tainted by the horrors of war. That's not only amongst Tamil people - Sinhalese, Muslims and every other race in Sri Lanka too has suffered! And then there's the military - most of the young men and women who die and are getting maimed for life from landmines and more are poor people who're fighting to keep our country safe. They're dying to save the currently affected civilians and to prevent future generations from being under the tyranny of a madman.

Is this the end of the problems in Sri Lanka? Of courseNOT. This is simply the beginning of a historic opportunity for ALL Sri Lankans to come together and once and for all find a 21st century style, humane solution to a fight we've been meaninglessly continuing between two closely related races for 2000+ years. Enough is enough.

Sinhalese and Tamil people are both of Indian origin. We may have come from different racial origins and may speak languages that have different roots. However, we've been living together in a tiny sliver of land for 2000+ years!

This is the 21st century. The world is not local any more. The world is flat. The battle is global. There is no time to waste fighting with each other and not give simple respect and rights to everyone. In the last several hundred years the fight was continued on partly because it was helpful and supportive for foreigners who dominated us to have us biting each other's toes. After independence we went a step further and let petty short term political advantage continue the fight.

Today the world is a trivially small place. We don't have time to be bickering internally. If we don't get our act together and unite and start establishing our place in the evolving world, we'll be left FAR behind while others continue to exploit our weaknesses and get ahead. In the end ALL of our poor people will suffer- Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and more.

I hope everyone who's been vehmently arguing to destroy the LTTE will continue to vehmently argue to find a rational, reasonable, decentralization of power in Sri Lanka to enable not only Tamil people in the north and east to develop themselves, but also for the Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils in other parts of the country to develop too. We need to get together and become a stronger force in the world; internal bickering is simply playing into the hands of those that want us to keep doing that so they can make money selling us deadly weapons and more.

After that let's get together with the rest of the world oppressed by the IMF thugs and create a new truly democratic global structure. They destroyed Asia in the '97 Asian crisis (read Globalization and its Discontents by Josef Stiglitz) and when its the western system that's melting down they're doing what Asia was prevented from doing: bailing out everything from public companies to private companies to banks. Now when we're affected by that mess our soverignity must be surrendered to get help. Enough of that thuggery.

one if the best insights to the crisis in Sri Lanka and the so called 'economic terrorism'. It is indeed sad to see the double standards of all these International bodies and the ultimate outcome of their policies.

I hear that the BBC is reliant on info not just from the Tamil diaspora in London but also from the likes of Oxfam, who have an interest in over-egging the pudding so to speak and over-stating the humanitarian disaster in the north. Oxfam has an army of press officers and media advisers in its Oxford HQ who have nothing better to do but to brief the BBC and other journalists, and another army of policy advisers who brief DFID and 10 Downing Street. Is it any surprise information that the info received by UK Government from British NGOs like Oxfam is blatantly political and ant-Sinhala, and would appear to be designed specifically to stop the Government of Sri Lanka from defeating the LTTE? I urge British NGOs working in Sri Lanka to behave responsibly, and not be the stooges of the UK Government, and prisoners of their own vested interests.